Note
from Editor: After the speakers were returned to RAudio and the review was
published, I was made aware of a potential defect in one binding post on each
speaker, when used in a bi-wiring configuration. I have requested the return
of the speakers so that they can be re-evaluated.

Introduction

When
our faithful Secrets reviewer Paul Knutson attended the 1999 CES, he made a
special effort to check out small manufacturers. Often, such inquiries lead to
discoveries of wonderful products manufactured by companies that lack the PR
budgets and other resources necessary to obtain high profile reviews.

One
of the many fruits of Paul’s searches was obtaining a pair of Raudio
Chadwick two-way, floor-standing speakers. Because my room is better equipped
than Paul’s to handle larger speakers, Paul offered them to me for review.

I
was quite excited to receive the Chadwicks. Though I’ve performed several
modifications to my reference Michael Green Chameleon III speakers, they have
been my sole reference for many years. Because the Chameleon’s sound changes
greatly when one makes even subtle alterations in their tuning, I have been
longing to try non-tunable speakers in my system whose sonic signature remains
constant.

I’ve
now had several opportunities to audition the Chadwicks with my Pass Aleph 5;
the new Pass Volksamp 30 (Aleph 30); the previously reviewed Bruce Moore 70
amp, this time equipped with truer-sounding Svetlana KT-88 tubes; and the ART
Audio Concerto amp (sounding, in my opinion, much better with the Svetlana
KT-88 tubes than with its stock KT-90s). Preamps were variously tubed Bruce
Moore Companion III and the solid state McCormack RLD-1 (a dream with remote
control, review forthcoming). The rest of my system was as outlined at the end of this review.

Description

The
speakers arrived from Hong Kong in incredibly impressive, fully lined,
padlocked metal shipping cases. It took both the gym buffed Paul and a friend
of his built like a football player to get the cases up my three flights of
stairs.

Even
more impressive is the look of these speakers. The gorgeous enclosures
I received are made of quality MDF, veneered with selected walnut andfinished with several layers of polyurethane. It seems that intensive labor is required
to polish each layer, using a process similar to that employed with “piano
finishes.” The result is a speaker so shiny and attractive that I was concerned
that the parakeet I was birdsitting would land on the speaker, think – to the
extent birds think
– that it was seeing another bird in its reflection, and
start pecking away at the enclosure.

One curiosity of the design is that the woofers are ear level (at
least for someone my height sitting down), while the tweeters are more like chest level. My
experience of how this affects the sound will be discussed later in this
review.

Design Philosophy

I am not a whiz with technical matters. My forte, as explained in
my other reviews, is music and sound. As a CD and performance reviewer, I
attend live, mostly unamplified concerts on a weekly basis, sitting in
different places in different venues. I trust my ears, and my sense of what
“natural sound” is about, even as it varies from the first row of a small
house to the upper balcony of a large symphony hall.

Given my limitations with technical jargon, I shall quote below
what the designer, Raymond Chan, has to say about his philosophy and design
implementation. The quotes are taken both from the Raudio website and a
personal e-mail from Raymond. I have done my best to edit Raymond’s Hong
Kong English.

“Efforts
have been made to cut down the size of the speaker system without compromising
bass extension. The fact is the smaller the woofer/midrange, the higher the
resonant frequencies. However, this can be compensated for, at the expense of
sensitivity. So, many builders claim their speaker systems can deliver bass
down to 20 Hz or even deeper! Actually a quality 40 or 50 Hz bass is already
very impressive. We aim to provide

quality
bass instead of highly distorted, boomy sound. It is our belief that quality
bass can only be delivered from a well designed transmission line rather than
from any sealed box or bass reflex type cabinet.

“All
of our speakers are designed in Double Traveled Transmission Lines (patent
pending). With the well constructed transmission line, high frequency
components (200 to 4.5 kHz) can be maintained undisturbed. Hence, our speakers
sound like electrostatics in the highs, while their earth shaking bass is
exceptionally clean. All in all, listening is believing!

“I named the enclosure design as DTTL (double traveled
transmission line), which is a ported design in aperiodic nature. Massive absorption
materials were used in the patented inner enclosure. The inner
enclosure has minimal rear reflection interference, which provides the closest
sound reproduction of the driver. This enclosure has virtually no sectional
resonance as compared to the conventional transmission line.

“Some speaker builders have called their TSL a quarter lambda
line. However it has a pitfall. Quarter lambda enhances front emanating sound
only at a single frequency. Cancellation occurs at three-quarter lambda
frequencies, which are well within the audible ranges. Unlike others designs,
ours is not time aligned, mirrored, or diffraction loss reduced. I consider
such design modifications only marketing hype. Phase distortion for an
ill-designed crossover can far exceed the minute phase correction obtained
from time alignment.”

Listening

I put the Chadwicks in roughly the same position as my Chameleons,
spread far apart in my 14.5' x 17' foot listening room, with the center front of
the speakers approximately 8.25 feet from the rear wall. Speakers were toed in
so that the tweeters fired slightly to the outside of my ears.

My initial impression was how quiet and clean the Chadwicks sounded. In
less than a minute, however, I began to realize that this clean sound
translated into a monotoned leanness.

The Chadwick’s particular sonic signature remained consistent
from recording to recording. On the new Harnoncourt authentic instrument
recording of Haydn’s opera Armida,
there were times in the Overture when the period instrument violins sounded
more like little buzz saws than beautiful instruments. The incredible Cecilia
Bartoli sounded okay, but the body of her voice that I have experienced live
on four different occasions just wasn’t fully there.

On mezzo-soprano Susan Graham’s exquisite recital of songs by
Reynaldo Hahn, La Belle Epoque,
there were times when the grand piano accompanying her sounded more like an
upright. There was also a slightly metallic, reddish coloration to her voice.
It was not that this tint was irritating; it was simply a sound that was
neither musically accurate nor especially pleasing. (In the last year, I have
heard Susan Graham both from the first row of a full recital hall, toward the
back and side in the same hall when it was empty, and from the side balcony of
the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. Nothing I heard sounded like what
her voice sounded like through the Chadwicks. Especially missing was the sense
of liquidity and ease that can be heard when the entire tonal envelope is
given equal weight).

When I listened to my favorite “Blues No More” track on Terry
Evans’ JVC-XRCD Puttin’ it Down,
the lack of resonant body on drums was especially apparent. So too was another
failing. Everything sounded a bit slow and laid back, as though Terry and his
musicians had indulged in some strong weed and were feeling too mellow to
deliver the sharpness of attack that the music deserved. When drumsticks sound
like they’re made of rubber, either it’s time for the listener to check if
someone has spiked his drink, or it’s time to make some changes to the
system.

Disturbed by what I heard, I e-mailed Raymond Chan to ask about
ideal speaker positioning. It turned out that while the speaker distance from
my rear wall was just about what he would recommend for my room, he felt they
should be aimed either straight ahead or toed in slightly, depending upon
coherence of the soundstage. He also urged me to remove my Michael Green
audiopoints and replace them with the wood cones he had provided, positioned
in a scary tripod configuration beneath his heavy speakers.

I did exactly what Raymond suggested. While the speakers were over
9’ apart, and angled in just a bit, the soundstage remained coherent. Such
positioning, I discovered, works fine for a listener seated right in the sweet
spot, but it is not good if two or three people are trying to share a futon.
In that case, greater toe-in results in less single speaker source
localization for the listeners seated on either end of the futon.

Because the tweeters were aimed nowhere near my ears, I did find
that the highs were a bit more acceptable. I also found that the soundstage
width increased. But I did not experience a significant increase in either
midrange or depth. The basic tonality of these speakers did not feel right.

I am not one to lightly dispense negative opinions, especially when
it affects someone’s ego, livelihood, and design philosophy. I therefore
decided to switch back to the Chameleons as fast as I could, do my
demagnetization and break-in tone ritual, and listen to the exact same music.
This is no easy task for a short man with a post-auto accident back, but I
accomplished the move within 15 minutes. For the heck of it, I decided to
angle the Chameleons just as I had angled the Chadwicks, and to support them
with the same wooden cones.

The difference between the speakers was most striking when I played
solo pianist Murray Perahia’s 1999 Gramophone award-winning CD of Handel and
Scarlatti. First of all, the piano was set farther back, with a sense of air
and space around the sound that I find exciting. After all, I am in a living room, not in Berkeley’s Hertz Hall. If I can’t experience the
excitement of a live performance, then I want something sufficiently engaging
sonically to justify me spending so many thousands of dollars on speakers and
other equipment rather than on concert tickets. I do not want my system to
sound like a “super good hi-fi.” I want it to sound thrilling and
emotionally engaging.

While my ScanSpeak tweeters are actually a bit brighter than those
in the Chadwicks, they are capable of a far more refined sound. There was a
delicacy to Perahia’s pianism, an exquisite softness of touch, that I had
missed with the Chadwicks. Susan Graham, too, seemed a far more sensitive
singer. I know from hearing her live that Graham sings from her heart. This I
could feel with the Chameleons; the softness came through as well as the
strength. And, because the Chameleons seemed more responsive to changes in
dynamics, they also seemed faster and more exciting.

The big test was the Terry Evans CD. Here, I experienced far more
depth of instruments, and far more space between and around them. Timbre was
also truer, cymbals sounding like cymbals rather than something edgy and
metallic; the drums again had a resonant body as well as a skin. What
especially struck me was how Ry Cooder’s guitar seemed to have
resonant strings. There was just more body and depth to the sound. Everything
was rounder, fuller, and more sonically convincing.

I must say that the Chadwick’s woofer seems more seamlessly
integrated with the tweeter than the woofer and tweeter in my Chameleons.
There is no “hump” as the piano descends into the lower regions. But, then
again, with less of a midrange to begin with, there is less opportunity for a
“hump” to be heard.

Tweeter Below Woofer

As mentioned above,
one curiosity of the Chadwick design is that the tweeters are below
ear level. This results in a soundstage lower than what I am accustomed to
hearing. It raises some when the speakers are pointed nearly straight ahead,
but it is still lower than with the Chameleons. At one point, when the
speakers were toed in and I had guests over, we experimented with sitting on
the floor rather than on my futon. Although this change did not boost the
midrange, it did result in a more natural sound perspective. Perhaps these are
speakers for Lilliputians or for folks in cultures where sitting on the floor
is the norm. For those who choose to sit on couches on chairs, the sonic
perspective may come up a bit low.

Conclusions

I conducted several listening sessions with the Chadwicks. I used
four different amps – five if you consider my tube change in the ART Audio
Concerto – and two preamps. I also tried different cones beneath them, and
different amounts of toe-in. In every instance, I found myself dissatisfied.
Though these speakers certainly have their strengths, they do not deliver the
convincing musicality and visceral excitement that I demand from an audiophile
system. How they would sound with a better tweeter – I changed the tweeter
in my Chameleons from one ScanSpeak model to another – or with different
internal wiring – I changed mine to Nirvana, as I did with the wiring in my
preamp – I do not know. But I am convinced that the choice of tweeter and
its position in the enclosure represents a definite sonic limitation to the Chadwick
sound.

The Chadwicks are beautiful speakers with a unique design.
Visually, they are an asset to any listening room. Sonically, they will
probably mate best with systems that exhibit recessed treble and overabundant
midrange and bass. Those with well-tuned, sonically balanced systems whose
components and wires are in the price range that warrants spending $7800 or more on
speakers, may not find everything they wish in the Chadwicks.